


red is not your color

by Anonymous



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Clothed Sex, M/M, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Prompt Fill, body painting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:54:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24443176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Mere canvas can’t contain Raphael’s beauty or Ignatz’s inspiration.Kinkmeme prompt fill for Ignatz/Raphael: Body Painting.
Relationships: Raphael Kirsten/Ignatz Victor
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35
Collections: Anonymous, FE3H Kink Meme





	red is not your color

**Author's Note:**

> Written to fill [this kinkmeme prompt](https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/476.html?thread=35804#cmt35804): _Raphael's broad and sculpted body is the perfect canvas for Ignatz's art._

Raphael is an artist. Not in the traditional sense; brushes amount to toothpicks in his hands for how easily they snap, no saints appear when he sings, and though he’s light enough on his feet to dance, the formal movements stand at odds with his size and disposition. No, his canvas is the battlefield and fists and claws his media, perfectly suited to his brutal, beautiful brawling technique.

Raphael in a fight is art in motion: light plays off his build, highlighting bulges and exaggerating the shadows between. His muscles undulate with every uppercut and cross, syncopated to the rhythm he improvises, and those beats layer beneath the melody of joyous battle cries, harmonious grunts, and dissonant steel clangs to compose a fleeting symphony. Blood (never his own) sprays his armor in the crescendo as he cuts down foe after foe until the enemy has no choice but to surrender to his virtuosity.

Those first breaths after victory surge and crash in Raphael’s chest like waves, and it’s those moments that Ignatz longs to capture. If only he could muster passion for battle in the same measure that swells within him when he watches Raphael, for then he might have the life his parents want for him, but art is the only path that has ever called his name.

So he paints from memory: Raphael, drenched in scarlet amid the scattered remains of his enemies. It’s atrocious—Ignatz hasn’t captured any of the exuberance, the movement, the music that captivates him—and he shreds the disaster lest he have to look at it a moment longer. Again and again, he puts brush to fabric, and every foul creation ends in tatters.

And when he has no canvas left to rend, inspiration strikes anew in the dining hall, because Rapahel attacks his food with that very same zest, so eager he splatters his shirt in mustard. 

One simple accident throws Ignatz’s mistake into relief: red.

“Aww, that’s gonna stain,” says Rapahel, pouting down at his chest, and Ignatz’s gaze follows. 

Gold suits Raphael, like the morning sunbeams that stretched across his body when Ignatz painted him shirtless. Ignatz projects oranges and browns, too, not on Raphael’s shirt but his skin, to accentuate the honeyed warmth of his eyes, his hair, his smile. Mere canvas can’t contain everything Raphael is—purples, blues, pinks, blended like sunsets on warm nights spent sharing dreams as children—everything Raphael means to him. 

Ignatz grabs Raphael’s hand the moment he finishes his meal. “I need to paint you!”

“Okay!” says Raphael with all the vigor of a battle cry or a lunch bell, pulling energy to Ignatz’s fingers and warmth to his chest. 

They charge the makeshift studio that doubles as Ignatz’s room, and Raphael’s already discarded his stained shirt. Ignatz tosses his bedsheet down to protect the floor and Raphael’s eyes scan the room. 

“What happened to your easel?”

Ignatz drops an armload of paints—he’s overstepped his boundaries, perhaps because his body always gets twelve steps ahead of his brain when he’s inspired, and he forces himself to slow down. Take deep breaths. Be brave.

“I’ve been trying to capture the way you look after a battle, but I’ve been going about it all wrong,” Ignatz tells him.

“Maybe you just need me to pose for you again!” Always eager to help, Raphael doesn’t wait for a reply, flexing his arms and chest and making Ignatz’s heart dance. His muscles are the stuff of sweet, erotic dreams, and that’s why Ignatz barely got through the last painting without an obvious (and embarrassing) reaction. 

“Well…” Ignatz’s face is getting hot. “Actually, I was thinking this time I could paint your body.”

“My...body?” And when Raphael breaks his pose to run his hands down his chest, over the mountains of his pectoral muscles and the rolling hills of his abdomen, Ignatz might pass out on the spot. “Sure! With your paint and my muscles, we’ll be an unstoppable artistic force of nature!”

Just like that, the tension lifts, and Ignatz can’t help but laugh until—saints alive, Raphael is taking off his pants and he’s wearing only tissue-thin smallclothes that leave nothing to the imagination. 

“Don’t want to get my clothes messier than they already are,” chuckles Raphael, entirely indifferent to (or perhaps unaware of) of the distinct, impressive shapes between his legs, his thick, heavy bulge like the plumpest, ripest fruit. Ignatz’s mouth goes dry as Raphael selects his pose, gauzy fabric shifting and folding over the most intimate area of his body. For all the nude figure studies he’s done, Ignatz can’t even think the words because it’s Raphael, not a stranger; Raphael, his closest friend, his favorite subject, his... _ crush _ seems too juvenile a word, and  _ object of his affection _ too impersonal. His soulmate in any capacity, however Raphael will have him; the first person to take him as he is and the only one who never asks for anything more.

Colors and shapes fracture in Ignatz’s mind, and as he puts brush to glowing skin he’s compelled to cast his penchant for realism aside, thoughts drifting into the abstract along with his creation in his trance. The brush extends his hand, inextricably part of him, but if Ignatz lingers on that thought for a second too long—that he’s caressing the body of the man he adores so dearly—he’ll lose inspiration to love and lust, and Raphael has only consented to be painted, not worshipped. 

Raphael’s back, strong enough to hold up all of Garreg Mach (and responsible for at least half of the reconstruction) takes on gold, juniper green, and cedar brown, a sunrise over a lush forest, a new beginning on a strong foundation, and Raphael holds still and steadfast as Ignatz swirls the brush over his skin.

But when Ignatz circles round to face Raphael, the brush hovers, uncertain, over the blank canvas of his chest, so broad and beautiful, and that’s when Ignatz notices Raphael is holding his breath. 

“Is everything all right?” Ignatz asks, voice wavering barely above a whisper. Raphael sucks in a breath—his ribcage gets even larger, and then his chest shakes with a rumbling chuckle 

“Oh, yeah, I’m good!” exclaims Raphael. “I was a little nervous because this is kinda new, but it’s you so I trust you.”

Ignatz replies too quickly. “I trust you, too.”

“Good,” Raphael says. He nods and adds, “It feels good.”

Whether that makes it easier or harder to return the brush to his skin, Ignatz can’t say, but he does it, and the rippled streaks of teal-blue on Raphael’s abdomen look intentional, like ocean waves. He drags the brush up, serpentine to experience those peaks and valleys, and Raphael sucks in a breath, holds it until Ignatz reaches his sternum. Ignatz lives and dies by those pectoral muscles; they’re the perfect anatomical study, but depicting them made him long to touch them, to massage them and hear Raphael react, to see his face. It’s impossible to look up at his face now—Ignatz’s eyes are level with his nipples, their tawny brown peaks jutting out at him (it must be cold), begging to be painted. Ignatz rinses his paintbrush, mixes bronze without tearing his eyes away, and with a silent gasp, he presses bristles to tip.

_ “Oh…” _

That’s a moan. Ignatz can tell, because he let one out, too. Bolder, he whirls the brush around Raphael’s nipple in an outward spiral, makes it browner, harder, even more appealing. Raphael makes another sound, almost a whimper, as Ignatz swirls the brush back in toward the center—it feels less like an extension of his body now, but it’s the closest he can come to touching Raphael. Knowing his nipples are sensitive is going to fuel Ignatz’s fantasies for months, and he indulges himself, drawing circles after circle just to hear Raphael sigh and moan and—

Raphael grabs his wrist. His huge hands could wrap around Ignatz twice, but Ignatz doesn’t dwell on that. He stops. Looks up into those big, golden eyes. 

“I-I’m sorry, I—”

“Don’t stop,” Raphael says, and with his other hand, he plucks the paintbrush away and presses Ignatz’s hand to his unpainted breast. 

It’s beyond inspiration, that stiff nipple digging into his palm, and Ignatz can’t keep himself quiet or still. Sighing, he shifts his hand and steps closer, into a physical obstruction. He looks down and—

“Wow,” is all Ignatz can say. White linen stretches to its limits around Raphael’s proud cock, so engorged that the flushed head pierces the opening in the fabric. A pearl glistens atop the slit, and Ignatz sears the image into his brain, to draw upon when his creativity lags. But now isn’t the time to paint; Ignatz doesn’t compare to Raphael in size but he’s the hardest he’s ever been, clothes pulling uncomfortably at his crotch, mere centimeters away from Raphael’s. 

“Can we…” Ignatz trails off as Raphael blurts out, “Do you want to rub off on each other?”

“What?” Ignatz looks up at his face in shock. 

Raphael looks sheepish and Ignatz instantly regrets his interjection. “Sorry if that’s too forward,” says Raphael, “and it’s fine if you don’t want to! It’s just that I’ve been dreaming about it for a long time and I was hoping, since you’re turned on and I’m—”

A kiss, Ignatz decides, will make up for his rudeness. He surges onto his toes, unbothered by the paint that must be transferring to his clothes. Pressing his lips to Raphael’s is like breaking art block, like crashing through every mental barrier he’s ever built. Raphael pours himself into the kiss—his energy, his passion, his heart—and it’s clumsy, but they push their bodies together, colors bursting in Ignatz’s mind as their cocks meet. Too much fabric separates them, but the friction is too perfect to change, and Ignatz doesn’t even realize he’s rolling Raphael’s nipple between his fingers until he tastes that rumbling moan from Raphael’s lips, feels it pass into his own chest. With one hand, Raphael kneads Ignatz’s back, caressing his face with the other, at once strong and gentle. Paint smears their bodies as they grind, blending into new colors, beautiful in movement if not in hue, and then pleasure transcends color, adding white to the mix in random splatters even prettier than deliberate strokes.

When their senses return, they’re a mess of paint and soaked pants, and Raphael’s laugh is a joyous thing. 

“I guess we’ve both been waiting to do that for a while,” Ignatz says with a chuckle of his own. It’s not embarrassing, not with Raphael, even if it’s a little uncomfortable. Raphael’s hand at his hip makes up for it.

“This might be your best work yet.” Raphael smiles brighter than ever before, and that’s it—a vision realized. Ignatz leans against him, finally at peace. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it OP! Thanks for giving me the opportunity to write these two. 
> 
> I tried a different, more flowery style for this story (I say as I post the fill anonymously) so I hope it worked for the theme!


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